Therefore if the right of the Spanish sovereigns was valid, so also is that of New Granada; and consequently the pretension of Central America is arbitrary and null.

The jurisdiction of the Mosquito Coast was not "restored" to New Granada, but was for the first time vested in that vice-royalty, by the royal order of 1803; and the object of this transfer was better to secure the country against the very thing which Great Britain was trying to fasten upon it, British dominion. Whether the Mosquito Coast belonged to New Granada or to Nicaragua, it did not belong either to Great Britain or to the Mosquitos. Its later history and present status would seem to justify the claims of ownership made by Nicaragua.

On the 8th of January, 1848, the Nicaraguan forces retook the port of San Juan. They might then have been left in possession of it, but for the apprehension of another danger. On the day that it became known at Vera Cruz that a treaty of peace had been signed by which California and New Mexico were transferred to the United States,1 a British fleet set sail from Vera Cruz, and resolved that the Islands of Saint André and the part of the Mosquito Shore comprised between Cape Gracias a Dios and the Chagres River [boundary between Guatemala and Santa Fé, or New Mexico] shall be separated from the government of Guatemala and incorporated in the vice-royalty of Santa Fe."

1 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, concluded Feb. 2, 1848; ratification exchanged May 30, 1848.

proceeded to the mouth of the San Juan River. On the 12th of January it took possession of the town and established British authority over it in the name of the Mosquito Indians. A force marched inland to the Lake of Nicaragua, where, on the 7th of March, a treaty was concluded between Great Britain and Nicaragua. The first article provided for the return of the prisoners taken by the Nicaraguan forces on the 8th of January. Article III was worded as follows:

The Mosquito flag and other effects taken in the same port on the same day shall be returned immediately; and as the officer commanding His Majesty's forces desires to obtain from the government of Nicaragua a satisfactory explanation of the outrage which the said commander thinks to have been perpetrated upon the British flag by the lowering of the Mosquito flag which is under its protection, the government of Nicaragua declares, "that it did not know that the Mosquito flag stood in such relation to that of England that an outrage upon the former involved an outrage upon the English flag; and that far from intending to insult the latter power, it earnestly desires to cultivate the most amicable relations with that government."

In Articles III and IV, Nicaragua promised not to disturb the peaceful inhabitants of San Juan and that no custom house should be established in the neighborhood of that port. But the treaty did not cede to Great Britain any Nicaraguan territory or acknowledge her title or that of the Mosquito King to any part of it.

Chick

In the meantime the United States had taken action in anticipation of British encroachment for increasing its political influence in Central America.

In 1846 it signed with New Granada a treaty looking to the construction of a canal across the Isthmus of Panama, which was ratified in 1848. This was the first diplomatic transaction by which the Government of the United States acquired treaty rights and assumed treaty obligations in reference to an isthmian canal. It contained among others the following provisions:

Article XXXV. . . . The government of New Granada guarantees to the government of the United States that the right of way of transit across the Isthmus of Panama upon any modes of communication that may now exist, or that may be hereafter constructed, shall be open and free to the government and citizens of the United States . . . the United States guarantee, positively and efficaciously, to New Granada, by the present stipulation, the perfect neutrality of the before-mentioned isthmus, with the view that the free transit from the one to the other sea may not be interrupted or embarrassed in any future time while this treaty exists; and in consequence, the United States also guarantee, in the same manner, the rights of sovereignty and property with New Granada has and possesses over the said territory.

In 1849 the United States obtained a concession from New Granada for the construction of the Panama Railroad.

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The British took alarm, fearing that the active, audacious, and enterprising Yankees would acquire other privileges in the strip of land uniting the two continents. For the piercing, however, of the latter, the most practicable route seemed to be not the Isthmus of Panama but the system of rivers, lakes, and lowlands which connected the harbor of San Juan on the Atlantic with the Bay of Fonseca or the harbor of Realejo on the Pacific. From the sea up to the Machuca Rapids, about thirty miles, the San Juan River was in dispute between Nicaragua on one side and Great Britain (or the Mosquitos) and New Granada on the other. Another portion of it was in dispute between Nicaragua and Costa Rica. The Bay of Fonseca was partly under the jurisdiction of Honduras and partly under that of Nicaragua. So in negotiating for this canal the United States would or might have to deal with the following States: New Granada, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Honduras, to say nothing of the Mosquitos and Great Britain.

The British-Mosquito occupation of San Juan made that place virtually a British dependency, blocking the western terminus of the interoceanic transit. In the negotiation of the Clayton-Bulwer Treaty, the United States and Great Britain aimed primarily at two different objects: the United 1 Union latino-americana by Torres-Caicedo, p. 74.

States at the realization of interoceanic water communication and Great Britain at the obstruction of the apprehended expansion of the United States in Central America. By force of arms Great Britain held the key to the situation at San Juan, and by her position in the Mosquito country, in British Honduras, in the Bay Islands, and in Jamaica was capable of prompt and vigorous action in the retention and utilization of that advantage. For the problem thus presented to the United States there were two natural solutions: the complete and absolute withdrawal by Great Britain from every position that she held in those territories, or her effectual inhibition from using any such position to oppose the free, unobstructed use of the canal or the expansion of the United States.

The solution which President Polk decided upon and sought through his secretary of state, James Buchanan, to bring about was a sort of compromise. It was to induce or compel the British to abandon their protectorate over the Mosquito Indians, thereby ceasing to obstruct the construction of the canal and surrendering much of their power to command or threaten the route adopted for it. Whether to act directly upon Great Britain or to influence her indirectly through the States of Central America, was still a question when, on the 3d of June, 1848, Buchanan wrote to